Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Rood

Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Rood

This Roman Catholic church was built between 1903 and 1905 to designs by Edward Simpson of Bradford, assisted by his son Charles. It is designed in the Late Victorian Gothic style.

The church is constructed of coursed, squared sandstone with ashlar dressings and Welsh slate roofs. The east end sacristy porch is built of sandstone ashlar, while the interior walls are of red brick with stone dressings.

The building has a tall five-bay nave and a two-bay apsidal sanctuary under one roof, with a south-east Lady Chapel and north-east sacristy. Shallow two-bay transepts extend either side, and the nave is flanked by four-bay lean-to aisles. A north-west tower and south-west baptistry complete the composition. Attached to the east end are single-storey rooms originally used as youth rooms and the former Nelson Street façade.

The west gable end faces George Street. The main west entrance features two cusped doorways within a pointed arch with a hood mould with foliate stops and a relief-carved Crucifixion in the tympanum. The double plank doors have decorative ironwork strap hinges. Above rises a large six-light west window with Decorated tracery and a quatrefoil to the head. To the left stands a square tower that becomes octagonal as it rises, with tall single-light louvered belfry openings and a stone spire with gargoyles and moulded bands. A small single-light window appears in the west elevation, and a pointed-arch doorway with a hood mould with carved stops and fielded-panel double doors is located in the north elevation. To the right sits a small baptistry with an apsidal end and hipped roof.

To each side of the nave are low outer projections for shrines and confessionals, which carry buttresses to lofty aisles. Each aisle bay contains a pointed arch housing a narrow two-light window with cusped heads and a small trefoil. The south transept has two tall three-light windows with Perpendicular tracery. The north transept has two shorter four-light windows with trefoils and central cinquefoils. The chancel has three-light windows with trefoils and cinquefoils. The Lady Chapel has a three-light window flanked by two-light windows above three blocked basement windows.

At the east end stands a single-storey room with a lean-to slate roof, hipped on the left-hand side. Standing in front of the original front elevation is the stone-built façade of the former church on Nelson Street, with a flat roof of corrugated plastic bridging the gap. This classical façade features an entablature, a wide central entrance with three steps flanked by paired pilasters, and a round-headed window to each side. The windows have moulded heads with giant keystones and recessed aprons beneath the sills. The doorway has modern vertical metal-bar gates and the window apertures have similar grilles.

The interior has six-bay, pointed-arch stone arcades of white Bath stone with blue Yorkshire stone bases and a taller, pointed sanctuary arch. The elongated piers are octagonal with attached colonettes. The walls are red brickwork in stretcher bond. The aisles are transverse vaulted in brickwork with stone ribs. Bays five and six form the crossing and the two-bay transepts, which are similarly vaulted but higher. The nave and sanctuary have an arch-braced hammer-beam panelled roof. The nave and aisles have terrazzo flooring, with oak block flooring beneath the pews, and the sanctuary has diagonally set squares of Swedish green and white marble.

The aisles contain two traceried recesses to each side, alternating with confessionals housing two marble sculptures of the Pieta and St Patrick, and two stone sculptures of St Michael and St Anthony. Above these is a blind traceried frieze into which are set fourteen tessellated Stations of the Cross, the work of artist Gabriel Pippett. These were erected by the congregation as a First World War Memorial, with a dedicatory stone reading: "THE / STATIONS OF THE CROSS / ARE ERECTED BY THE CONGREGATION / IN MEMORY OF THE MEN / WHO LAID DOWN THEIR LIVES / IN THE GREAT WAR / 1914-1918 / RIP."

The octagonal pulpit is of carved stone with red marble colonettes and moulded coping and contains a mosaic panel of Christ the Shepherd. The south transept features the Shrine to English Martyrs, a war memorial with an Uttoxeter alabaster Gothic frame with opus sectile panels and mosaic panels beneath, and the Shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour. The north transept has the Shrine of St Teresa of the Child Jesus, also with an opus sectile panel, Gothic alabaster frame and altar.

The bays of the apsidal sanctuary are marked by slender pale green and dark green marble colonnettes with four sculpted heads to each side. The elaborate, traceried and pinnacled altar and reredos was created by A B Wall of Cheltenham. The altar frontispiece has a carved panel of the Last Supper, and two panels in the reredos depict the Finding of the Cross and the Exaltation of the Cross, flanked by two similar panels of Christ carrying the Cross and Abraham leading Isaac. In a recess above is the Holy Rood. The organ gallery is at the rear with an ambulatory beneath. The Lady Chapel to the south is lined with white marble with opus sectile images. The Sacred Heart altar is relocated from the old church, and the new reredos is designed by Gabriel Pippett. The baptistry has wood block flooring and an octagonal, relief-carved stone font.